Virome-wide ubiquitin ligase discovery reveals diverse mechanisms of immune evasion | 🤩

FTFY

Our evil ORFeome paper is out! In collaboration with @alex-stark.bsky.social, we screened ~4,000 viral proteins and secreted effectors from bacteria and parasites, covering hundreds of diverse pathogens, for phenotypes in human cells.

I wanted to like QED's new 1% preprint ranking. I really did. But the more I looked at the data, the more uncomfortable it made me. Here is my full peer review. open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

For the first time, we can see individual mRNAs in 3D inside cells at nm precision. Their shapes vary by gene and subcellular location. Congrats @fbzt.bsky.social & team @impvienna.bsky.social Top 1% @qedscience.bsky.social Edited by @lifescienceeditors.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Congratulations to Gautam Dey (EMBL) and Omaya Dudin (University of Geneva) for being awarded the EMBO Gold Medal 2026 in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the #LifeSciences in Europe! 🧪 https://www.embo.org/press-releases/embo-gold-medal-2026-awarded-to-gautam-dey-and-omaya-dudin/

New study published in Science! Led by @thevirusmc.bsky.social and @plantophagy.bsky.social, former group leader at the GMI of the @oeaw.bsky.social, the researchers set out to understand how autophagy – the cell’s clean-up and recycling system – mediates plant immune response to viral infection.

"I would like to emphasize the importance of question-driven science...young scientists might enjoy science more if they are thinking about questions rather than just collecting data" journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Open Postdoc Position - Giant E3 ligases: mysterious mechanisms & non‑protein substrates. Interested? Join us to uncover how these molecular giants tag lipids, RNAs, sugars beyond proteins, on organelles and pathogens, to defend the cell. Details & Application here www.imp.ac.at/career/open-...

😀 see also www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper is finally out! 🥳 If you want to know how a single Salmonella effector rewires the whole macrophage transcriptional landscape by hijacking one host transcription factor, check our latest research! Thanks to the @thurstonlab.bsky.social and @peterwshill.bsky.social labs for an amazing work!

We offer a PostDoc position for a fully funded project on lipid-encoded #lipidtime protein quality-control checkpoints at the Golgi: great collaborators, excellent working & living conditions & benchspace with a view ;) Please share and repost!

Structure-function analysis of the bacterial ClpE/ClpP AAA+ protease - Journal of Biological Chemistry www.jbc.org/article/S002...

Proud to share the yeast telomerase structure, led by the talented @hongmiaohu.bsky.social in collaboration with the Wellinger and Chartrand labs. Discovered 37 years ago and took us nearly 7 years but totally worth the wait 😍. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFE4...

Excited to share our work on the structure and function of cytoplasmic lattices within mouse embryos. A collaborative effort with @niakanlab.bsky.social and work led by @kashishsingh.bsky.social and @inaharasimov.bsky.social . It is now out on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We’re looking for a creative & enthusiastic postdoc with expertise in cryo-EM or protein biochemistry to join @annebertolotti.bsky.social (LMB Neurobiology Division) and help solve structures of key stress signalling enzymes and develop new inhibitors. www.nature.com/naturecareer... Apply by 22 MAR

The Trojan Horse is real, and it’s microscopic! 🐴🦠 Our paper is out today in @cellcellpress.bsky.social! We discovered that deltaviruses physically hide INSIDE helper viruses to sneak into new cells. And to prove it, we had to image them from every angle. 🧵👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ubiquitin & Friends Fiesta in Vienna, 29-30 April 2026. Great speakers, small size, a friendly community, perfect for early-career researchers to connect with fellow ubiquitin enthusiasts. Sign up at www.protein-degradation.org/symposium/ and submit abstracts for talks and awards. #ubfriends26

You are passionate about ubiquitin, proteostasis and cellular biochemistry and want to be part of a collaborative, ambitious, excited and fun team? I am recruiting PhD students via the @imprs-lm.bsky.social graduate school: www.imprs-lm.mpg.de/index.php/le... (2/3)

I am incredibly excited to share that I will start my independent lab at the @unidue-zmb.bsky.social at the @unidue.bsky.social as Junior Professor of Cellular Biochemistry. Research in my lab has the goal to decipher the ubiquitin code! There are multiple open positions! (1/3)

🚨⚠️ New Preprint Alert! ⚠️ 🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Screening p97 cofactors, @prithadg.bsky.social identified FAF2 as the strongest activator of the p97-UFD1-NPL4 complex. Leveraging her mechanistic descoveries, we designed 𝘥𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘰 binders that could also enhance p97 substrate unfolding.

seems interesting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Mammalian cells form hibernating disomes akin to those in bacterial cells - but connected via ribosomal RNA www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... co-first with: @andschwarz.bsky.social with: @lea-dietrich.bsky.social, @sgiando.bsky.social, @erin-schuman.bsky.social and many more 🧵 0/6 #MolBio 🧪

Polymerization-inducing chimeras (PINCHs) are a novel bifunctional modality that sequesters target homodimers in a polymeric state, thereby inhibiting their function www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our newest preprint on Parkin missense variants in work led by Erna Sol & @vvouts.bsky.social in @rhp-lab.bsky.social Using a multiplexed assay we determined the effects of 9,212 out of 9,300 single amino acid substitutions and nonsense Parkin variants. 1/n doi.org/10.64898/202...

And a new paper from the lab. A follow up to a previous study in which we elucidate the mechanism of the nuclear transport. Read the full story: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Look at this 🙂 #CryoEM Structural basis for CTCF-mediated chromatin organization by @lucas.farnunglab.com @voslab.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Too much data, too little thinking. A important essay from Ruslan Medzhitov on the importance of understanding data, not just generating it. A must read. @Yale www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A new paper reports a “nucleotide code” that coordinates Lis1-dynein binding stoichiometry, which in turn governs Lis1’s ability to relieve dynein autoinhibition www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m excited to share my first-author paper, with co-first author @rongqinxiaoxiao.bsky.social, now out in @nature.com. We developed a live-cell single-particle tracking platform to see how TRiC & prefoldin engage proteins during co- and post-translational folding. 1/9 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nature research paper: PtdIns(3,5)P2 is an endogenous ligand of STING in innate immune signalling go.nature.com/4klvMp1

Our latest cotranslational folding story is now published @cp-molcell.bsky.social. Really cool (I think) new ideas about how exactly the ribosome directs folding and assembly to make sure complicated proteins mature efficiently in cells. www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

Have a look at our new structure of co translational folding in yeast. This is collaborative work initialized by the Rospert lab from the @uni-freiburg.de. Structural work has been done by the amazing @lgrundmann.bsky.social Stay tuned for the next ribosome paper from him, following very soon.

New preprint! Led by @sarahgersing.bsky.social we map how 7,500+ variants in glucokinase (GCK) affect binding to GKRP and disentangle this from stability. We now have activity, abundance, and interaction scores for 7,128 GCK variants - a resource for understanding phenotypes and glucose homeostasis.

With so many great reviews on LDs already out, do we need another? Sarah @cohenlaboratory.bsky.social and I were approached by @natrevmcb.nature.com to do a review on LD heterogeneity and inter-organelle contacts...topics in reviews, but not a focus. Fun project! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"RNAPII clusters reflect local accumulations of transcriptionally engaged polymerases and do not form through higher-order mechanisms such as phase separation" 😬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... by the @mirlab.bsky.social

Hey #portfolioday! I'm a bloke who used to investigate Genetics before turning into a full-time Artist. Now I do handmade installations, molecular graffiti, and digital design to convey the beauty of Science.

a Trp/Phospho/Ub trifecta linking metabolism and degradation - wow 🤩 big congrats to the whole team for this amazing, almost historic study.

Join us for the #Ubiquitin & Friends Symposium 2026, April 29-30, in Vienna! Fantastic guest speakers👇 & many slots for talks from abstracts, flash-talks & posters. Lots of opportunities to network. Register now to save your spot! ➡️ www.protein-degradation.org/symposium/ #ubfriends2026

Can we design mutations that bias proteins towards desired conformational states? Today in @science.org, we introduce Conformational Biasing (CB), a simple and scalable computational method that uses contrastive scoring by inverse folding models to identify conformation-biasing mutations.

We are thrilled to share our latest work uncovering the mechanistic basis of target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD). This work was driven by @jakobfarnung.bsky.social and @elenaslo.bsky.social in a fantastic collaboration with Brenda Schulman's lab. tinyurl.com/E3TDMD (1/5)

This is really cool and important.

Writing is thinking - a short but memorable thread.

The Clavel Group is recruiting a new postdoc for two possible projects dealing with plant-virus interactions and selective autophagy! More (wordy) details below ⬇️🌱🦠

Vaults. They are cell biology's greatest puzzle! This preprint from Martin Beck's lab shows them docked on ER membranes with a ribosome inside. What on earth is going on there?? #CellBiology #WTFology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New work describes our efforts to achieve CRISPR editing of the mitochondrial genome. www.biorxiv.org/lookup/conte...

Excited to share our work into ubiquitin E1-E2 specificity mechanisms. CryoEM visualising #ubiquitin transfer,biochemistry,evolution @labhofmann.bsky.social & tissue expression analyses @psarkies.bsky.social Big thanks to the team,reviewers & handling editor @dimitristypas.bsky.social rdcu.be/eTRdR

Für seinen Beitrag zum Verständnis der zellulären Kraftwerke (Mitochondrien) wurde Nikolaus Pfanner in die Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, die nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Italiens, aufgenommen. Zudem erhielt er die Walter Neupert-Medaille. ufr.link/auszeichnung-pfanner @cibss.bsky.social

The silence from the pro-LLPS crowd is deafening. As a (truly) unbiased observer, I for one am very curious to see the counterarguments, which surely must exist. The skeptics are having their day.

This has now been published in print! Check it out: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...